Kabani Dalam, the new face of Maoist activities; hunt for activists intensifies

The Kabani Dalam, an armed force unit of banned CPI (Maoists) whose activist was shot in police firing in Wayanad on Wednesday, is posing new challenges to the Kerala Police, according to Intelligence reports.

CP Moideen, brother of slain Maoist CP Jaleel, heads the Dalam, says Kerala police which is bent on doing all they can to deny the group any foothold in the State. The group is said to actively operating in the deep forest pockets of Waynad, Kannur and Kozhikkode districts in the northern parts of the State.

The Dalam takes its name from the river Kabani and is said to have been formed in November 2013. This naming of armed forces commemorating a river of Kerala is part of an attempt to brand it as a Kerala group.

It is part of the banned CPI(Maoist) of the Naxalite movement with a local touch, though seen as a continuation of the CPI-ML(Peoples War) in Andhra Pradesh, which was critical about the stances of erstwhile leader Charu Majumdar of West Bengal.

The main operational areas under Kabani Dalam are Wayanad, Kozhikode, and Malapuram districts. Police have declared CP Moideen, brother of slained Maoist CP Jaleel, a fugitive from the law. leader CP Ismail, another brother of CP Jaleel, was also an activist of Dalam. Police record also show that CP Ismail has been in prison in Maharashtra since 2016 and was caught along with another alleged Maoist Murali Kannanmpally.

The active and eluding Dalam leaders include Sundari, Jayanna, Disha, Kavita and Ramu. There could be other unidentified activists, including some veterans of anti-CRPF operations in Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh.The report says Kabani Dalam, one of the four armed units, has sworn to target the police to avenge the death of Maoist leaders Ajitha and Kuppu Devaraj at the hands of Thunderbolt commandos in the Karulai forests in Nilambur in Malappuram in 2016.Police hope to deter Maoists from becoming an armed menace in the extensive forest area known as the northern tri-junction of the contiguous States of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. The unit of armed irregulars, some of them wielding AK-47 assault rifles, have been active in the Meppadi, Vythiri, Panjathara, Thondernadu, Vellamunda, Talapuzha and Thirunelly localities in Wayanad.

Maoist Sinoj, who belonged to Valappad and had died while handling explosives in a forest in Andhra Pradesh and was a member of Kabini Dalam. A member of the Western Ghats special zone committee of the armed guerrilla group, Sinoj was engaged in creating a foothold for the Dalam in the Kerala and was in-charge of its political wing operating in Kerala.Police also doubt that the growing outcry in the name of human rights over the killing of Maoist leader CP Jaleel is part of a strategy to halt action against the armed Maoists.